A neural network based price sensitive recommender model to predict customer choices based on price effect

The impact of price and price changes should not be ignored while designing algorithms for predicting customer choice. Consumer preferences should be modeled with consideration of price effects. Businesses need to consider for efficient prediction of an individual's purchase behaviour. Personalized recommendation systems have been studied with machine learning algorithms. However, the price-aware personalized recommendation has received little attention. In this paper, we attempt to capture insightful economic results considered in the marketing and economics disciplines by employing modern machine learning architecture for predicting customer choice in a large-scale supermarket context. We extract personalized price sensitivities and examine their importance in consumer behaviour. The employed data collected from a supermarket chain in Germany consists of implicit feedback based on customer-product interactions and the price of every interaction. We propose a two-pathway matrix factorization (2way-MF) model that is price-aware and tries to memorize customer-product interaction's implicit feedback. The proposed models achieve better model performance than standard Matrix Factorization models widely used in the industry. The approach was re-validated with data from supermarket chain in Taiwan. Other industries can adopt the proposed framework of modeling customer's preferences based on price sensitivity. We suggest that further research and analyses could help understand the cross-price elasticities.     

互联网能力与知识能力交互效应对知识创造绩效的传导机制:一个被中介的调节效应模型

整合资源基础观、知识基础观和动态能力理论，探讨互联网背景下互联网能力、知识能力两种企业内部因素交互作用对知识创造绩效的影响过程，尤其关注了具有前瞻性与反应性特征的战略柔性在这一过程中的重要作用，从而构建了一个被中介的调节效应模型。基于我国399家企业调研数据发现，互联网能力、知识能力均对战略柔性有显著正向影响；互联网能力与知识能力的交互作用通过战略柔性的中介机制促进企业知识创造绩效提升，即存在被中介的调节效应。在理论上，丰富了资源基础观和知识基础观在组织竞争优势构建方面的前因研究，在实践上，为处于互联网背景下的企业有效提升知识创造绩效提供了实践参考。     

Robustness to strategic uncertainty

We introduce a criterion for robustness to strategic uncertainty in games with continuum strategy sets. We model a player's uncertainty about another player's strategy as an atomless probability distribution over that player's strategy set. We call a strategy profile robust to strategic uncertainty if it is the limit, as uncertainty vanishes, of some sequence of strategy profiles in which every player's strategy is optimal under his or her uncertainty about the others. When payoff functions are continuous we show that our criterion is a refinement of Nash equilibrium and we also give sufficient conditions for existence of a robust strategy profile. In addition, we apply the criterion to Bertrand games with convex costs, a class of games with discontinuous payoff functions and a continuum of Nash equilibria. We show that it then selects a unique Nash equilibrium, in agreement with some recent experimental findings.     

资源配置视角下战略性新兴产业基地建设决策过程研究

采用案例分析法，以国家传感网创新示范区建设的决策过程为研究对象，从资源配置视角重新审视了战略性新兴产业基地建设的决策过程。结果表明，在战略性新兴产业基地建设决策过程中，地方政府充分发挥了主观能动性，与中央政府、科研机构及企业积极互动，获得了建设产业基地的资源。同时，中央政府完成了与产业基地甄选及部署相关的资源配置。     

Supplier selection and partnerships: Effects upon restaurant operational and strategic benefits and performance

This study focused on identifying strategic criteria involved in selecting suppliers of restaurant products/services specific to casual dining, full service independent restaurants to obtain operational and strategic benefits for those managers operating in this highly competitive marketplace. A total of 765 responses were obtained from managers at independently owned restaurants throughout the U.S. Results revealed that ‘product’ and ‘financial/technical’ criteria had significant and positive effects upon operational benefits, while ‘product’ and ‘service’ had positive effects upon strategic benefits. When the sample was segmented into low and high supplier partnership groups, the positive effects of ‘financial/technical’ and ‘cost/price’ were significantly greater for the ‘high’ partnership group pertaining to operational benefits. ‘Product’ and ‘service’ and their effects upon strategic benefits were greatest for the high partnership group. Based on our findings, implications, limitations, and recommendations for future studies have been provided.     

Scenarios and design: Scoping the dialogue space

This paper examines the intersections between two futures-oriented domains of practice and research: scenario planning and design. Both are practice-led, with uneasy but productive relationships with theorizing. Exploring their relations offers ways to address challenges faced by interdisciplinary management research, which struggles to connect research and practice. The authors describe how they brought the two fields together. We outline how we convened, designed and facilitated the fourth Oxford Futures Forum held in May 2014. This event brought together leading practitioners and researchers in a collective inquiry based on self-organizing, generative and reflexive making and dialogue. How participants engaged, from responding to the invitation to take part, as well as their practical and discursive encounters with one another during the event, threw up similarities and differences between the two fields. We present nine themes that capture the links and spaces between design and scenarios, yet suggest that they are not a straightforward overlap or a simple relationship, but rather a range of interactions between the fields, including feeding in, bridging, tension and repulsion. The paper's contribution is to suggest how scenario planning can engage with design, resulting in new opportunities for research and projects. These modes of engagement provide a framing to explore dialogues between other management disciplines.     

A strategic planning model for the railway system accident rescue problem

The present study examines the location of emergency rescue problems for urban ambulance and railway emergency systems. The proposed model considers probabilistic rescue demand, independent busy fractions of ambulances, and the corresponding risk levels in railway segments. We formulate the proposed model using fuzzy multi-objective programming and solve it using a generic algorithm and a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II. Computation results are analyzed by applying the model to a real-world Taiwan railway system. Analytical results demonstrate that a proper adjustment of the rescue resource location improves rescue effectiveness for railway rescue and urban medical service demand.     

The influence of customer-to-customer interactions on elderly consumers’ satisfaction and social well-being

This study highlights the valuable role the hospitality industry can play in addressing a societal problem by studying how social interactions between elderly consumers and other customers influence the satisfaction and social well-being of the former. The data were collected from 268 elderly consumers in local coffee shops in the United Kingdom using a self-administrated questionnaire. The findings reveal that elderly customers’ interactions with other customers have a direct effect both on customer satisfaction and social well-being. They also show that social interactions with other customers have both direct and indirect effects on the social well-being of elderly customers. The study provides good evidence for how commercial hospitality settings can serve as a space for social exchange that helps to alleviate social isolation.     

Network games with incomplete information

We consider a network game with strategic complementarities where the individual reward or the strength of interactions is only partially known by the agents. Players receive different correlated signals and they make inferences about other players’ information. We demonstrate that there exists a unique Bayesian-Nash equilibrium. We characterize the equilibrium by disentangling the information effects from the network effects and show that the equilibrium effort of each agent is a weighted combinations of different Katz–Bonacich centralities.     

Changes in risk and strategic interaction

In this paper we study the comparative statics of Nth degree stochastic dominance shifts in a large class of non-cooperative games. We consider symmetric equilibria as well as asymmetric equilibria in which the risk changes are idiosyncratic and not necessarily of the same stochastic order. Furthermore, we establish conditions for risk changes to produce multiplier effects on equilibrium strategies. Finally, we evaluate the comparative statics of stochastic dominance shifts in supermodular games, which may feature multiple equilibria and non-convex strategy sets.